Mastering Linux Shell Scripting - Second Edition

Counting arguments

As previously mentioned, the script name is the first argument at index 0 of the array. So, if we try to count the arguments, then the count should always be at the very least 1. In other words, if we have not supplied arguments, the argument count will be 1. To count the items in an array, we can use the len() function.

If we edit the script to include a new line we will see this work, as follows:

#!/usr/bin/python3import sysprint("Hello " + sys.argv[1])print( "length is: " + str(len(sys.argv)) )

Executing the code as we have earlier, we can see that we have supplied two arguments—the script name and then the string Mokhtar:

If we try and have a single print statement to print the output and the number of arguments, then ...